About one million years ago I cross-stitched a whole bunch of forum smileys/emoticons and attached them to note cards for a massive Internet forum-based snail mail exchange. At the time I was pretty sure that what I was doing was ridiculous, but I was having fun, and these were only people on the Internet anyway, so who cared, right?!

Today I received the nicest letter from one of the recipients that I’ve actually kept in touch with after all these years. In it, he explained that crafting had never occurred to him before he received my card, but that he loved it so much he tried out cross-stitch for himself (he actually sent me his first attempt – a Half-Life lambda icon), and that led to him trying out other crafts and projects from knitting, to papercraft, to electronics, and beyond!

So really what I wanted to share with you today was the thought that even though I was sure my little cross-stitch pixel-art cards were daft, they actually inspired someone out there to explore their own creativity, and that is AWESOME.

So keep crafting, folks – inspire away! And you know, looking back I reckon those emoticon cards were actually a pretty cool idea. If I do say so myself :)

• Other stitching on GeekCrafts
• Other card and paper crafts on Geekcrafts